Vico Office Schedule Planner Video Tutorials

In Level 1 training, we learned how to set up both our locations and our location systems. In Level 2, we used Task Manager to connect our cost assemblies and components to the labor.

This third level focuses on a basic understanding of location-based management systems (LBMS) and flowline scheduling; and then we dive into view settings and calendars for your construction project. For more detailed information about LBMS and Flowline, please use the hyperlinks above to navigate to many more resources on the topics...even a textbook available on Amazon.

At Vico, we divide the scheduling process into four discrete areas: locations, planning, visualization, and on-site production control. The first leve of training featured LBS Manager and highlighted how to develop your location and location system strategy. The second level featured the Task Manager in Schedule Planner as part of the Scheduler's workflow. And this level also features Schedule Planner.

Vico Office Schedule Planner Level 3

Before we can start planning our construction project, let's first review the major concepts of Location-Based Management Systems (LBMS) and Flowline.

The location-based management system relies on the progress of work crews as they migrate (or flow) through a building. The goal is to preserve the work crew's productivity rate as they move from location to location and minimize the number of starts and stops.

Flowline theory is an integral part of Vico scheduling solutions. Flowline theory asserts that subcontractors can work at optimum productivity rates with optimum safety and craftsmanship if their location is free of unnecessary materials and other crews. As we'll see in this video, the locations are plotted along the y-axis and the calendar is displayed across the x-axis. The slope of the task lines represents the crew productivity.

Please be sure to access the resources noted in the introduction to this section. At first, reading a flowline schedule can be confusing. But we guarantee that after just one week, you won't want to schedule your projects any other way.

Step Two: Establishing the Project Settings and Work Calendar for Your Project

In this video we learn how to adjust our construction project settings with simple changes to the headers and footers for our flowline views. We also learn how to change our project calendar adding Saturdays as a work day and editing the holidays. We can also adjust the work hours per day.

These settings are essential for your project as they will effect the crew productivity, so please make certain your calendar is correct from the start.

Step Three: Creating Custom Views of Your Construction Schedule

If you are anything like me, you like your email, spreadsheets, and reports all formatted a specific way. So just as Estimators can configure their preferences in Cost Planner, so too can Schedulers refine their custom views of planning data in Schedule Planner.

This video illustrates just one way to slice and dice data to create a specific view for the substructure location system, but you can create dozens of views for your projects to help you better communicate this data to other project stakeholders like the subs and Owner. You'll also find that this level of granularity helps you find areas of improvement for your schedule optimization.

We have already established the LBS for our BIM models in LBS Manager and now we see those locations along the y-axis of our Flowline schedule. However, we can also see a disconnect in the tasks. Since our goal is continuous flow for the crews, we can manually adjust the sequence of locations without impacting the work we've already completed in LBS Manager. After all, we are simply sequencing the locations in a different order.

Step Five: Create More Custom Views with the Split Screen Option

There are several options for displaying corresponding scheduling data in Vico Office Schedule Planner. One way is to create a custom split screen view. This video shows how to create your own custom views including flowline/gantt and flowline/resource histogram.

With these custom views, you'll be able to work smarter by organizing all the information you need on one screen.

Now that you've seen that setting up a schedule using a BIM model first requires establishing locations and location systems to effectively organize the crews based on quantities by location; then mapping cost assemblies and components to their respective tasks, and then creating the project calendar and organizing your custom views of the schedule data, let's advance to Level Four Schedule Planner Training. We will learn how to refine our optimization with layer logic, lag, pacing, and ASAP tasks. You can also request to receive the entire video collection by completing the form on the Vico Office Training Videos page.